Can Anyone Find Me That Mesopotamian Clay Tablet Telling You To Marry A Party Girl Because She'll Bring

Let.them.grow.old.together. 👏

Ref

Headcanon that Cardassian skin wrinkles differently/later in life than Human skin, 'cause it's tougher/thicker. Cue: Garak being super captivated by Julian's face and how it changes. So cute. 🤲🥲

Trektober Day 2 - Monsters & Magic. I think Worf would enjoy D&D but be a bit of a nightmare player.

STRANGE NEW WORLDS ― S3 TEASER TRAILER P1

This is everybody on Deep Space Nine

i havent had anybody bounce and moan on it since.... (a haunted look flashes across my face) the incident.

request for “shojo pose”. I don’t remember what that is but if you wanted an anime pose here’s your anime pose

He has an aura to him previously only seen in depictions of Mary holding baby Jesus

julian bashir stutters !!!

which yknow he was kinda upset about because he felt so dumb to people. he knew he was intelligent, but he just couldn’t articulate it in a way that other people could understand. he always paused during his sentences, letting his words catch up to his thoughts. tripped over words, tongue going to the next syllable before he even got to the first.

and when people hear those pauses and breaks, it’s like they forget about everything else. screw theoretical hyperbolic geometry applications to worldly development, it wouldn’t fucking matter if he mixed the words up.

but, it does hide him. hides him well. because no matter how smart you are, how enhanced or augmented, it doesn’t matter if you have a stutter.

amok time

One reason In the Pale Moonlight lands so well is that the show plants the seeds early on for Garak representing a sort of “out” for Sisko when he has to circumvent official procedures. There’s the bit in The Search where a holographic mental projection of Garak shows up to flirt with Sisko and enable his rebellion against Starfleet, and then The Way of the Warrior has the part where they’re wondering what to do about the Klingon invasion fleet headed to Cardassia and Sisko says “we need a third option” and it immediately cuts to Garak. In the Pale Moonlight picks those threads of Garak being someone Sisko leans on when he needs to take a more underhanded approach (and someone who, similarly to Quark, Sisko can put pressure on with no repercussions).

But Garak’s perspective on it is interesting, because of how much his dynamic with Sisko reflects the dynamic he used to have with Tain. There’s that part in The Wire where Tain tells Bashir “I never had to order Garak to do anything… that’s what made him special” and that’s pretty much exactly how Garak behaves with Sisko in this episode. He does what he does best - being maximally useful to someone more powerful and anticipating everything they want and need, taking an intention and shaping it into a workable plan with little direction. He comes up with the entire scheme pretty much on his own and puts it into play with minimal participation from Sisko save things he needs official sanction for, and anticipates all contingencies and variables beforehand. And then of course sees to it that the plan is carried out, in a way that Sisko would never sanction but that he knows that on some level Sisko wants - or rather, that Sisko wants the outcome while being spared having to order Garak to take the measures to see it through.

Garak molds himself into the role Sisko sees him as playing in a way that’s similar to how he made himself into the person Tain wanted him to be - in that case, as Garak puts it, he was a “reflection” of Tain himself. Except with Tain, that process involved Garak shaping himself to embody the values that Tain espoused, and expunging the parts of himself that Tain abhorred, namely weakness and sentiment. And with Sisko, Garak reflects the parts of Sisko that Sisko doesn’t want to face and wants to shunt off onto someone else. And that plays out not only re: Sisko’s willingness to make moral sacrifices for the greater good, but even just on a smaller scale - there’s the part where Sisko snaps and threatens Forgery Guy, and Garak steps up with that truly terrifying smile and promises to drop in on Forgery Guy to “say hello”. Just playing the role of Sisko’s Evil Henchman to perfection, and thus enabling Sisko’s loss of control and his cruel streak. He’s very subservient to Sisko throughout the episode! But it’s through that subservience that he actually gets the upper hand on Sisko, solely by reflecting his darker side at him and getting in that jab about Sisko’s self respect being sacrificed. It’s so utterly delicious.